Ah, more training today. What a wonderful world education is. Actually, apart from telling me absolutely nothing that I didn't already know, today's training wasn't too bad, even, at times, moderately entertaining. What did get to me though, and I may well have ranted about it before, was the frequency with which the words "evidence" and "targets" appeared in the training. I believe passionately that these words are responsible for more bad teaching, for more drops in standards, more - to use a phrase I hate - bad practice than just about anything else.
It isn't just education we're talking about either. Everyone in England has shuddered in the last couple of days at the story of Stafford Hospital where hundreds have people may have died and where people keep blaming the targets culture for some of the failings. I've said it before, but it bears repeating, some things should not be judged by how they meet targets.
As for evidence there is an endemic belief that things must not only happen, not only be seen to happen, but be documented as having happened. Every conversation with students should, we are told, be written down because if it isn't then we'll not be able to prove to the inspectors that it happened. Every chat with co-tutors about classes should be minuted because if it isn't minuted then how will those same inspectors know that it took place? Things not recorded didn't happen.
The trouble is that nothing is ever proposed that reduces the paperwork load, only things that increase it and no one ever finds a way to put more minutes into the hours to give us time to do these things. I probably have a dozen or so tutorial-style conversations with students every week and a couple of in-the-corridor or over-lunch discussions with co-tutors. Even if they only take two minutes each to document (and that's a wildly optimistic estimate) that's around thirty minutes more of my time gone. And I don't have enough time as it is.
What is this obsession with evidence anyway? The college obsession I understand. They have to be obsessed because the Government and hence the inspectors are obsessed but why? What does having folders full of bits of paper saying that I've done things actually prove? It doesn't prove that I've done them; it proves that I have lots of bits of paper. It would be far easier to invent fictional paperwork by NOT dealing with the issues in the first place than it is to deal with them and document them.
Now that could easily be seen as over-cynical. Nobody, you might say, would just make stuff up but if you don't have time to do the job and evidence it (and don't you think the habitual use of "evidence" as a verb says something about people's attitudes?) then what do you do? Especially if the evidence is seen as more important than the task.
The obsession with targets and evidence is doing no favours at all for the students, patients, clients or customers. All it's doing is making life difficult for everybody trying to do a decent job.
It isn't just education we're talking about either. Everyone in England has shuddered in the last couple of days at the story of Stafford Hospital where hundreds have people may have died and where people keep blaming the targets culture for some of the failings. I've said it before, but it bears repeating, some things should not be judged by how they meet targets.
As for evidence there is an endemic belief that things must not only happen, not only be seen to happen, but be documented as having happened. Every conversation with students should, we are told, be written down because if it isn't then we'll not be able to prove to the inspectors that it happened. Every chat with co-tutors about classes should be minuted because if it isn't minuted then how will those same inspectors know that it took place? Things not recorded didn't happen.
The trouble is that nothing is ever proposed that reduces the paperwork load, only things that increase it and no one ever finds a way to put more minutes into the hours to give us time to do these things. I probably have a dozen or so tutorial-style conversations with students every week and a couple of in-the-corridor or over-lunch discussions with co-tutors. Even if they only take two minutes each to document (and that's a wildly optimistic estimate) that's around thirty minutes more of my time gone. And I don't have enough time as it is.
What is this obsession with evidence anyway? The college obsession I understand. They have to be obsessed because the Government and hence the inspectors are obsessed but why? What does having folders full of bits of paper saying that I've done things actually prove? It doesn't prove that I've done them; it proves that I have lots of bits of paper. It would be far easier to invent fictional paperwork by NOT dealing with the issues in the first place than it is to deal with them and document them.
Now that could easily be seen as over-cynical. Nobody, you might say, would just make stuff up but if you don't have time to do the job and evidence it (and don't you think the habitual use of "evidence" as a verb says something about people's attitudes?) then what do you do? Especially if the evidence is seen as more important than the task.
The obsession with targets and evidence is doing no favours at all for the students, patients, clients or customers. All it's doing is making life difficult for everybody trying to do a decent job.
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This mini-rant was brought to you by the "Just Let Me Do My Job" Foundation.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing.
4 comments:
Just thought you'd like to know that I ocassionally read your outpourings. I am showing this one to my boss and we will all be nodding along.. Trouble is - we're the converted. It would be nice to think that one day someone in the performance monitoring industry might accidentally log on to this, rub his chin and say "hmmm - you've got a point..."
Nice to see you (and where are you on the Metro nowadays?). If I think about it and if it's actually possible I'll send you a postcard from North Korea. I go in under two weeks now!
It's unforgiveable! I've just read my original comment from months ago. I can't believe what I did. But there it is. Indelible. Nothing can ever undo it. Even if I get a Nobel prize the headline will read - "Top Honour for Wombourne Dyslexic"
There is virtue in not commenting on one's own errors. Until you mentioned it I hadn't actually noticed it because people's brains tend to see what they expect to see. Even now I had to read it three times to see what you were talking about.
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